📌 Favourite Posts
If you want personal recommendations beyond the recent feed below, check out my favourite blog posts!
Welcome to dead.garden
Elena Ringo's Illustration of the Snow Queen by H.C. Andersen uploaded to Wikimedia in 2013, CC 3.0
Last Login: 22 Feb 17:50 UTC
What's on my mind?
I've always found it so strange when people state on their websites that their opinions don't reflect the opinions of their employer. Who automatically assumes they do? Is this actually legally necessary? Just in case anyone was worried about it, I'd like to clearly state that my opinions are my own and in no way represent the opinions of the president of Venezuela!
📍 Erfurt, DE
About the website
This is
- a personal website
- a passion project focused on fun and self-expression
- comparable to a personal social media account
This isn't
- commercial in any way
- a personal marketing strategy meant to enhance visibility and professional success
- interested in looking or acting like a website the former two points would apply to
Webmaster questionnaire
Jo
I just found this one HUNDRED questions webmaster questionnaire! I'll just pick a few I feel like answering right now, thanks.
Warum Webseiten einfacher sind, als du denkst
Jo
Dieser Post erfordert 0 technisches Know-How, was heißt für Leute mit technischem Know-How ist er vielleicht langweilig. Aber weil die deutschen IndieNews so einsam und leer sind
Proust's questionnaire
Jo
I saw Proust’s questionnaire on James' Blog and I thought I should try it out.
Funnily enough I got Proust's "In Search of Lost Time" as audiobook CDs for my birthday, because I thought it was funny that there was actually an audiobook. It's 7 days long, btw.
2025 in review
Jo
The best way to introduce this post might be to reflect on my post from January, where I begrudingly declared some new years resolutions, and see how good I was at keeping them:
Map of the internet
Jo
Reply to Help me map the internet! by Tiffany
Also posted to Indienews, maybe more people will draw maps before the end of November.
I saw Sara submit something for this! I think it's a cool prompt and since I'm done with my huge project (for now) I can finally draw stuff for fun again without feeling bad and thinking "I should be creating something else". So I also made it kinda silly.
Here's my map:
Cycle of life and death
Jo
Reply to this months IndieWeb carnival hosted by Alex on Cycles and fluctuations
This is a really fitting topic for an autumn month and a month so close to the end of the year!
I don't really have a solid vision of where this post is gonna go, just some general thoughts that could be connected to the topic. But since I haven't done the Carnival in a while (I had a short story planned that happened to really fit in with the topic last month, but of course I didn't get around to writing it) something may be better than nothing.
Here's an autumn poem to get it started:
While young, I knew no grief I could not bear,
I'd like to go upstair.
I'd like to go upstair
To write new verses, with a false despair.
I know what grief is now that I am old,
I would not have it told.
I would not have it told
But only say I'm glad that autumn's cold. The Ugly Page/ Picking Mulberries by Xin Qiji (this translation)
Linocut a stamp for my logo
Jo
You know this scenario: The printer says that ink is empty and then you take out the ink and there's still plenty in there. A while ago I started keeping the old cartridges, in case there's something I could use them for later.
One idea was to use the old printer ink as a pad for a stamp of my logo. So when I met my friend who once made a linocut print of a bat that looked soo sick I asked her where to get stuff like that because I never did that before (except I think at school when I was 14) and she even bought me these 17€ tools because I was too stingy.
Shout-out to Maxime ily <3
You've got mail
Jo
This poem was partially inspired by "Poems From An Email Exchange" by Hanif Abdurraqib.
It's angry and contains foul language. Also posted to Indienews
This post can also be read in German
Subject: "Re-Design and Promotion Strategy for Dead.Garden"
Subject: "About your Dead.Garden"
Subject: "Errors in your Dead.Garden"
Dear Dead,
your website is not good enough, in fact, it is actively bad.
Don't you know that you need Search Engine Optimization?
What are you, some kind of idiot?
Your site is currently ranked on page 1,000,000 of Google,
and if we know anything (in fact, we know everything),
this means that you are wasting not only your time,
but much more importantly
money.
personal website cards
Jo
Last night I went to bed thinking "what if I made business cards for my website". So I spent much of today designing them and cutting them out badly.
My printer is actually a bit messed up right now so the black isn't black so much as weird Cyan. But I like the cheap(?) vibe it gives the cards because it fits with what I kind of imagined for my site redesign, as I described it in a post from a few days ago. I printed them in black (blue-ish) and white and then highlighted each one. I actually used multiple colors to highlight them differently.
The past as more than a mirror
Jo
A while ago I read a poem that made me reevaluate how I think about the past; or how we in general tend to approach the past as primarily a resource from which we can draw comfort and knowledge. I'll just show you the poem and tell you what I mean, maybe it's a bit strange.
"Alas, all my life I've seen friends and companions fall off,
And now how many of them survive?
With gray hair hanging in vain three thousand zhang long,
I laugh away all worldly things.
Is there anything left, you ask, that might cheer me?
I see in green mountains such charm allure,
I expect they see the same in me,
For in heart and in appearance
We are a bit similar.
Goblet in hand, scratching my head at the east window,
I presume that Tao Yuanming, having finished his poem
Hovering Clouds,
Was in the same mood I am now.
Those on the south side of the Yangtze who play drunkard
in pursuit of fame,
How could they know the magic of unstrained wine?
Looking back, I'll conjure a gust of wind
and send clouds flying.
I regret not that I can't meet the ancients,
But that the ancients had no chance to see my wildness.
Those who understand me
Number only two or three." 贺新郎·甚矣吾衰矣 (Too much have I decayed!) by Xin Qiji
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A World without the Pain of Death
i woke from dream, cried, short of breath: what nightmare in my own desire - a world without the pain of death where no man fears he will expire. The earth was dry as blocks of sand, a lifeless heap we couldn't know and not one leaf would grace this land without the kiss of nature's flow; Where death did not exist in theory life as we know it was not found and every body that stood near me seemed to be yearning for the ground; Where none had ever died before no worm could feast on sustenance, no seeds could spring out of the floor, no thing could start, where no thing ends. The earth was such a dreary place - no laughter came from people's lips walking forever through the maze and dreaming of apocalypse. Despite it all they cherished living and I suppose we'd never see the ailments that can be forgiven; no matter what, man wants to be. They couldn't know for what they're yearning and hungry in the inner eye are things of which they're never learning: What privilege it is to die.